Dota 2 Beta Thread! Free beta invite keys on request!

Dota 2 is a sequel to the popular game originally designed for Warcraft 3. Similar games include League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth.

The game is currently in beta, and I think that you can still be invited if you sign up. If you have a Steam account, log in, and paste this into a web browser: steam://takesurvey/1/ take the survey and you have officially signed up for beta access.

***Many of the current Ars members have invites to the beta, feel free to ask!!!***

Dota 2 Cheat Commands. These can be used during a bot game (if they are enabled when you host it) in order to quickly test items, abilities on heroes, or who knows what. Just type them into a chat window. These were copied from the Dota 2 wiki. Figured it might be nice to have here on the thread:

Spoiler: show

-lvlup <x>Gain x levels.-gold <x>Gain x unreliable gold.-item <name>Gives the player the named item. Refer to the internal item names, below.-refreshGives the player full health and mana, and renews cooldowns.-respawnMoves the player to fountain, also respawning if dead.-levelbots <x>All bots gain x levels.-givebots <name>Gives all bots the named item.-spawnneutralsSpawns neutral camps instantly (but still taking into account neutral spawn blocking).-spawnruneSpawns a rune randomly at one of the two rune spots.-createhero <name>-createhero <name> enemyCreates named hero as a friendly or as an enemy. Refer to the internal hero names, below.-wtf-unwtfTurn on or off "wtf" mode, where abilities have no mana cost or cooldown.-allvision-normalvisionTurn on or off "allvision" mode, where the player is given vision of both factions.

It seems like they normally update the game with patches as well as new heroes every Thursday, so check back often!

Anyway, hopefully people are interested in checking this one out. If you play Heroes of Newerth of League of Legends, give it a try, you may really enjoy it. And, the game is being designed by Valve, who hired Icefrog, the person who maintains the current version of the Dota Allstars mod for Warcraft 3. He's done a great job optimizing and growing the game over the years.

If you have links or anything you would like me to add to the OP, please PM me, and I will gladly do so.

I just wanted to bump this so that it was ahead of the thread started by Ohiyesa. I've copied pretty much all of the links from that thread and pasted them into the OP here, but here's a link back to that thread if you wanted to refer back to it:

So, to put some more useful content into this post, I wanted to ask some people who are perhaps more pro than myself: Is there a standard solo position? In LoL for example, if I understand correctly, most often top is considered solo, isn't it? However, in Dota from what I have seen, mid is most often solo. Also, any general tips for ranged carries and melee carries? I seem to do fairly well with most heroes, but I have a tough time with these (especially melee agi carries). I suppose to some degree it depends on the hero, but are there some best practices?

Official or not, thank you for the links. I'll check those out later. I signed up for the beta because I wanted to check out what all the hubbub is about. I have not played DOTA, LoL or any.. I don't know what the genre is, Hero centric RTS?

Anyway while I find the game incredibly intimidating due to the large base of experienced players, I really love how they have everything in one interface, including a well-working spectator mode.

Thanks! I removed "official" from the title. If the mods have any problems with what I did here, I apologize. I guess I should have looked into that a bit more.

Yeah, it can be tough at first. I would say find a hero you like, preferably a ranged int, get to know them a bit by playing against bots and then maybe try your hand against the elitists.

People rage. Don't get discouraged, just tell them you're a noob. If they're not a total douchebag they usually lay off of you at that point.

The style is interesting. I believe Guinsoo coined the term "moba", short for multiplayer online battle ara. Valve decided to make up their own term, calling it an Action real time strategy. It's like betamax and vhs all over again!

Sounds like if they manage to get the next update out this coming Thursday it's going to be a big one. The blog post also mentioned a lot about increasing server capacities, so it sounds like they really want to ramp up the beta invites.

The power supply in my pc died last night, so I haven't even had a chance to play in about a week. Hoping to get back into it either this weekend or the following week!

So, to put some more useful content into this post, I wanted to ask some people who are perhaps more pro than myself: Is there a standard solo position? In LoL for example, if I understand correctly, most often top is considered solo, isn't it? However, in Dota from what I have seen, mid is most often solo. Also, any general tips for ranged carries and melee carries? I seem to do fairly well with most heroes, but I have a tough time with these (especially melee agi carries). I suppose to some degree it depends on the hero, but are there some best practices?

Yup, mid is always the solo lane. I've honestly never seen anyone try anything else (other than absolute beginners of course). Not sure what to tell you at such a general level that should be specific to them, but melee agility heroes are probably my favorites out of all of them. Well, and Sand King. Who doesn't love Sand King...

I filled out the survey with the 'I have no experience with DOTA or MOBA games' and got an invite 3 weeks later (or a few days ago). I've read some quick guides, watched a few online games, but only played one game with bots and an Arsian and I can seriously say - whaaaaa? Wow is it complicated. I thought the jokes about the 'learning cliff' were hyperbole, until now.

Complicated and anachronistic, and I'm just talking about the interface. Why is there an IRC window in my game? The configuration options are all in jargon and meaningless to a new player. It doesn't behave like any other game I've played and is a step backwards in many ways. Strangely enough, it has some rather great features in the UI. The friends list is integrated directly into the game. The player status shows where players are located, like 'Main Menu', 'Spectating', and so on. Finding games to watch is a breeze, and the spectator mode is amazingly detailed - almost like you are in the game yourself. News and updates are built directly into the game. For every great feature, there's just always a piss poor yang to the yen.

The game itself runs awesome on my system, which is rather old besides the 'new' GTX 560. The game play itself is a mystery. I intentionally played an easy character with passive abilities, but I had problems even getting even the 'simplest' of things to work. It took me quite a few minutes to figure out how to 'buy' an item. It's been forever since I played any Warcraft 3 single-player, but I don't remember the interface being this unintuitive and it's not been that long ago since I played Torchlight. I also died so damn easy. At first it was because I was doing noob things and diving where then was no need. Next I guess I was just so damn outleveled that I'd die in what seemed like 2 hits.

As of now, I can't see thing as being anything but a niche game. They'd have to put together an amazing offline experience (a tutorial in disguise) to make the game more accessible.

I filled out the survey with the 'I have no experience with DOTA or MOBA games' and got an invite 3 weeks later (or a few days ago). I've read some quick guides, watched a few online games, but only played one game with bots and an Arsian and I can seriously say - whaaaaa? Wow is it complicated. I thought the jokes about the 'learning cliff' were hyperbole, until now.

As of now, I can't see thing as being anything but a niche game. They'd have to put together an amazing offline experience (a tutorial in disguise) to make the game more accessible.

It'll always be very niche. It's hard to do well and the tolerance for error is low. If you're new or bad you're going to be a clear detriment to your team, there is just no way around that, and people are assholes and will blame you every time anything that in any way could be interpreted as your fault happens. The only reason I ever ended up playing was because I learned on LAN and played mostly with friends. I've played hundreds of matches, but I can still never really decide if it is worth the pain to start a game. They have to work REALLY hard on matchmaking and making sure that beginners are kept away from everybody else. DotA/MOBAS have the worst online community I've ever come across in PC gaming. Valve has been putting in options to praise or report other players, but that shit needs to be front and center to ever have an effect and they need to do more with it.

As for the interface, I probably don't see the problems because I played the original DotA. At least here the keys are rebindable and every hero doesn't have a different set of them.

FWIW, I don't think "niche" accurately describes MOBAs. League of Legends overtook WoW as the most played PC game in NA (in terms of total man-hours-per-week) a few months ago, and likely in other regions soon if not already.

Not that I disagree that the genre is rather unfriendly to new players, both through game mechanics and the notorious community.

I was thinking mostly as a genre compared to say first person shooters or MMOs in general. That said, this is some impressive stuff from LoL. I keep forgetting how they keep blowing past my expectations.

I continue to lack a beta key, but I've been watching a ton of tournament gameplay. For anybody interested, The Defense finals between Quantic and Na'Vi were rather fantastic. I would link you directly to the vods but the site is blocked at work. Try to ignore the spoiler news blurbs on the front page.

As a "test of skill" game, I prefer DotA to LoL by far. But it's severely unforgiving. LoL is a much much friendlier game.

Yeah. I played a few co-op bot matches this weekend, and even the bots were rocking us half the time lol. I still can't figure out exactly what's going on, but I'm slowly getting a better handle of it. The biggest issue I have right now is items. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be building, and the "suggested items" board seems less than helpful, because it ends up making you purchase items that have no upgrade for your character.

Yeah. I played a few co-op bot matches this weekend, and even the bots were rocking us half the time lol. I still can't figure out exactly what's going on, but I'm slowly getting a better handle of it. The biggest issue I have right now is items. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be building, and the "suggested items" board seems less than helpful, because it ends up making you purchase items that have no upgrade for your character.

Coming from a LoL background is actually a disadvantage compared to having minimal or no moba background at all. DotA is a completely different game and playing with a LoL mindset will kill you. I'm of middling DotA skill at this point and I guess here'd be my tips:

Starting out, play an easy hero. Skeleton King and Lich are the two usual examples. The recommended items, much like in LoL, are complete shit. There might be 2 useful items in the entire list, if that. If you want to be effective you're going to have to do some outside research and read some guides.At your level (low) last hitting isn't as important as securing early kills. But securing kills has an extremely high opportunity cost, as any 2 of your skills will use virtually all of your mana bar before level 6. Don't use skills unless you're absolutely sure you'll get a kill out of it, or to prevent dying.Dying in DotA matters. About 5 times as much as it does in LoL. Don't die early. If that means you just sit passively and collect XP, that's more important than last hits.Learn how to use the courier, and use it at the absolute instant you get enough gold for an item or component. If the courier is unavailable, put it in your stash. Just make sure you spend that gold because you could lose it to a death at any time.You must have a MUCH more aggressive mindset. If you get an early kill or two, your team's victory or defeat could hinge on your ability to snowball. Tower diving is hilariously easy compared to LoL; towers don't do much damage at all. Keep this in mind from a defensive standpoint too, they won't protect you whatsoever. It's easy to tank 10+ tower hits even at low level and any champ can laugh at a tower from level 10 on.DotA has way more active items so you'd better get used to using them (and turning them off if they're a toggle).Don't ever leave base without a tp. 2 if you can afford it.

You can edit the suggested items list to suit your own needs.I dont know what you mean with "no upgrade for your character". If you mean that items become useless as the game progresses, then yes, that happens.

I dont know what you mean with "no upgrade for your character". If you mean that items become useless as the game progresses, then yes, that happens.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

And the information above is quite helpful, as admittedly my 2 years of LoL is the only experience with a MOBA I've ever had. I find it so weird getting used to the fact that you don't have insta-kill capabilities like you do in LoL (or at least not that I noticed). Seems that you have to run through your skills and then auto attack to victory. I'm also trying to get used to the fact that you can level up your basic stats using skill points as well as actual skills.

I dont know what you mean with "no upgrade for your character". If you mean that items become useless as the game progresses, then yes, that happens.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

And the information above is quite helpful, as admittedly my 2 years of LoL is the only experience with a MOBA I've ever had. I find it so weird getting used to the fact that you don't have insta-kill capabilities like you do in LoL (or at least not that I noticed). Seems that you have to run through your skills and then auto attack to victory. I'm also trying to get used to the fact that you can level up your basic stats using skill points as well as actual skills.

um its quite the opposite, kills happen much more quickly and easily in dota

haha I am a Dota noob and am still figuring it out myself. Do we have a channel setup? Id love to play some games with other people as the random matchmaking can be kinda harsh especially with 2/3 of the games having leavers in them

haha I am a Dota noob and am still figuring it out myself. Do we have a channel setup? Id love to play some games with other people as the random matchmaking can be kinda harsh especially with 2/3 of the games having leavers in them

Yeah, it'd be really helpful to play with some other people that we can communicate with and ask questions as we go along.

The other thing I was doing was watching some streams on twitch.tv just to get a feel for other heroes and to see how others play. One guy (dont remember who...) does some decent commentary and breakdowns when it comes to why he decided to fight or run, and why he bought certain items.

Something I have heard a few times was to abuse the number advantage. What I get out of that is if one lane loses one or both of its heros, you should try and push it and get towers if you can. If someone else is able to move lanes and make it a 3v1 they should do that. Someone with much more knowledge can correct me if I am wrong.

Something I have heard a few times was to abuse the number advantage. What I get out of that is if one lane loses one or both of its heros, you should try and push it and get towers if you can. If someone else is able to move lanes and make it a 3v1 they should do that. Someone with much more knowledge can correct me if I am wrong.

Id like to add to that: If youre going for a tower, focus down the tower, then get the hell out of there. Usually, the enemy will try and gank you immediately afterwards. Dont give them a chance.

Also: If youre a ranged hero and your enemy is ranged, try and get the high ground. Shooting up a ramp has a 50% chance of missing.If youre inside the enemy base and about to kill the barracks, go for the melee barracks.

Id like to add to that: If youre going for a tower, focus down the tower, then get the hell out of there. Usually, the enemy will try and gank you immediately afterwards. Dont give them a chance.

Also: If youre a ranged hero and your enemy is ranged, try and get the high ground. Shooting up a ramp has a 50% chance of missing.If youre inside the enemy base and about to kill the barracks, go for the melee barracks.

I find it so weird getting used to the fact that you don't have insta-kill capabilities like you do in LoL (or at least not that I noticed).

Ahahaha. Hahaha. Aha.

You apparently haven't played any games with the wrong heroes yet. I think one of the reasons LoL never clicked for me like DotA did is that LoL is quite laid back in comparison. There are considerably less insta-death scenarios in LoL and battles last considerably longer. In DotA, if you last longer than 3 seconds in a battle you've probably won.

Valve, why have you forsaken me?! I wanted to not be as behind the curve in Dota 2 as I am in LoL. I signed up for the beta immediately when it became available, and yet here I sit, suffering in... whinyness.

I played LoL for a bit myself, and while I definitely noticed a difference, it was kind of hard for me to completely put my finger on it. I think if I played a bit more of both it would be easier to pin down.

Some helpful advice; pay attention to the radar. If your group is all together, you better get over there with them, because most likely they will go up against the other team all at once, and you want the best chance of winning those early full scale hero battles as often as possible. They often make the difference in a win.

I also noticed that it's huge if the solo has the upper hand. If your soloer is losing, then most likely you're in a lot of trouble as a team. If one guy is getting beat down early, communication is key, and ganks are necessary to prevent feeding and a likely loss.

Here are a few of the chat commands I have seen that I want to share. I wasn't aware what most of these meant, despite playing a lot of Allstars. If you know any others please post them. Also, if you want me to add anything to the OP, just PM me, I'd be happy to do so.

ss = secret shop (I think to mean your teammate in the lane is going there and leaving you alone temporarily)re = returning (I think)mia/mis = enemy heroes missing at bot (bottom) top or mid lanerosh = the big godzilla guy in the middle of the map. Usually you don't want to handle this guy until your team is level 13 or more (unless you have Ursa, who can solo him even earlier), so if someone is pinging and calling rosh before then, there's a good chance the enemy team is kicking your butt, and they may be over there. Sometimes if you're lucky and coordinated, you can kill them while they're fighting roshan, and change the tide of the battle. Those are awesome moments btw.

The melee barracks is usually on the right from what I remember, but yes, just click on it and it will say which is which.

I often play AI battles just to try out heroes I never really got to play. They don't really go so well (my teammates never back me up, and the enemy bots just seem to all swarm me if I attempt to go anywhere), but it's nice to get familiar with a hero. I don't bother finishing the game most of the time, unless I'm having fun and killing a lot.

I randomed silencer the other day, and had never played him. I must say, it was absolutely awesome. I knew how he worked, so I was lucky there, and had a good team. Carry really does mean carry. We had an Ursa too, but I was seriously the glue. I had 35 intelligence built up from hero kills by the end.

Then I got a single draft and played Slardar and got my ass kicked hard with the rest of my team. Raging ensued. I like slardar too, so it was extra lame. I did do badly though, I admit it.

My Steam handle is DarkSkies. I usually don't get to play all that often during the week, but I check in on Thursdays and definitely on the weekend to see what they added. I would be glad to play some games with anyone who is interested. I know most of the hero abilities, although I'm a long way from good at the game. I think my record is like 23-32 right now. I have a bad habit of randoming early in the picking process, and then these pro douchers pick counters, or I just end up sucking.

[EDIT] Oh one more thing. The voice acting is great (sometimes cheesy, but still great) and adds so much to the game! But at the same time, I suggest anyone who is new to this go into the sound options and set it to just "Events" for hero responses. Otherwise they will respond after almost every single click, and that definitely gets annoying. With Events, they say stuff when you buy items, kill heroes, gain levels, etc, and it's really enjoyable, especially when you buy a nice item and they respond as if they know it, or have a unique phrase for killing specific heroes.

Nice I got an invite. Are there any bots to practice against to hide my shame?

Honestly, while expecting the complete opposite, thus far DotA has been much less ragey than LoL. When I started playing I was COMPLETE shit. I mean I think my first game I went like 2-17. One guy said "fucking feeder" when the game ended. Whereas in LoL, if you make one minor mistake you can get raged at for the rest of the match by 2 people from your team and shit-talked by 2 from the other. LoL has THE worst community of any game I have ever seen, and it's not even close.

I think there are a lot more non-Americans in DotA and that helps, because their raging is cut down to "fking noob" and that's about it.